Better living through empiricism

June 25, 2018

I’m happy to do my best to help friends find candidates, including different candidates than my favorites. I’m primarily focusing on my home county of Montgomery, though many of the resources work for other parts of Maryland or even D.C. Montgomery County is presently providing a case study for why we need ranked choice voting or other systematic reforms, as is many of the victors are likely to have below 30% of the vote. Nonetheless, local elections, even in large counties like Montgomery, are a great chance to make your vote count.

Mini-ad: If you’re reading this before Saturday June 6th, please consider stopping by our humble abode sometime between 6 and 8 pm for a meet and greet for Hans Riemer, the one incumbent county council candidate, for a chance to ask about your concerns, hear his goals, and dine on wine, cheese, and other refreshments.

Non-partisan and Journalists

Vote411.org for candidate answers to topical questionnaires, as provided to the League of Women Voters.

Helpfully, Bethesda Beat is reporting who on the range of endorsements received for County Executive/Council/School Board and Congress/General Assembly. This can be useful both for finding your favorite group, or just seeing which candidates have enough support to be serious contenders if you wish to be strategic with your vote.

So almost done. District 20, Senator Will Smith has done a good job working on Purple Line implementations issues. Del. David Moon impressively manage to mix a remarkably progressive agenda with actually getting bills he sponsors passed. I do again feel spoiled for choice, as Del. Jheanelle Wilkins is doing a good job in her first term after being appointed to Sen. Smith’s seat. I’ve also had a good conversation with Lorig Charkoudian, who is conversant in a range of issues

However, I want to put in a plug for Darian Unger, who in addition to being a fire fighter and a professor at Howard, and Chair of Montgomery County’s ACLU, as also put in his time working towards the construction of the Purple Line.

General Assembly D18

I’d met Dana Byer repeatedly in the past over as she has been a reliable supporter of the Purple Line in a district with some skeptics. In addition, she would bring more diversity to the State Senate.

Democratic Central Committee

Both this and the school board I only have so much confidence, so I’ll just say that Dave Kunes is a hard worker that has done a lot of good in a range of positions. George Neighbors, my D20 Male candidate, mentioned instant runoff voting in his LWV entry, so while he’s running unopposed, I still wanted to give him a shout out.

Hans Riemer is the only incumbent and I think his record can be shown in a variety of the successful initiatives to make our communities more walkable and safe for biking. Beyond his vital support for the Purple Line, he’s championed initiatives like the expanded county earned income tax credit and improving transparency and efficiency of county administration. For beer fans, he’s also reformed our liquor laws to allow for the now booming local craft beer industry.

Evan Glass has long been a leader in our community. One of the political causes you’re more likely to know him from is his time as a board member for Equality Maryland. He’s also been a Producer on CNN and is the executive director of the Gandhi Brigade Youth Media, which gives some of the young people of our community the chance to gain skills and learn to be reporters or advocates. We saw one of their films a couple months back and it was really well done. Finally, he’s vice chair of Montgomery Housing Partnership and takes the affordable housing issue very seriously. He would also be the first openly gay person to serve on the Council.

Will Jawando’s special strength, according to a dear friend and transit advocate, is to bring a range of communities together. His lit emphasizes widespread economic opportunity, through mechanisms like smart growth, support for child card, and counter harassment measures. He and Hans are both on the teachers’ Apple Ballot.

Jill Ortman Fouse is coming with experience from the Board of Education. Aside from a brief Silver Spring encounter I haven’t had the chance to chat with her, but a friend praised her tenure on the Board of Education for being “evidence-based and transparent” and “100% for making sure all kids in MoCo succeed.”

I’ve had the chance to have good discussions with a few other candidates who were all on the GGW shortlist but not in the top 5.

Chris Willheim (+++ from ACT), I met at a friend’s meet and greet a few months back and he was conversant in a wide range of issues. He has experience as a legislative staffer and a teacher, the latter of which was particularly important to many of his ideas and reflected in his Apple Ballot endorsement.

Seth Grimes (++++/- from ACT) I’ve had the chance to speak with on the Metro and at ACT repeatedly. He has experience as Takoma County Councilmember and I found him quite conversant on the issues.

I had the chance to speak with Bill Conway (+/- from ACT) about the Purple Line when he attended an Action Committee for Transit meeting. He has experience as a Senate staffer and environmental lawyer and was conversant on the issues and supportive.

I spoke briefly with Gabe Albornoz (+/- from ACT) at the Silver Spring Metro one morning. I was pleased by his statements in support of the Purple Line and that we need to address the housing supply problem. His Recreation Department experience is also valuable.

District 5

Tom Hucker is the incumbent and his strongest challenger is running against bus rapid transit on 29. I’m certainly a bit biased since marrying into a Howard County family and having had an apartment in White Oak some years back, but I think that’s an important project both for today’s component and the eventual connections to Howard County, which includes connections to Columbia as part of its long term masterplan.

June 10, 2018

I’m happy to do my best to help friends find candidates, including different candidates than my favorites. I’m primarily focusing on my home county of Montgomery, though many of the resources work for other parts of Maryland or even D.C. Montgomery County is presently providing a case study for why we need ranked choice voting or other systematic reforms, as is many of the victors are likely to have below 30% of the vote. Nonetheless, local elections, even in large counties like Montgomery, are a great chance to make your vote count.

Mini-ad: If you’re reading this before Saturday June 6th, please consider stopping by our humble abode sometime between 6 and 8 pm for a meet and greet for Hans Riemer, the one incumbent county council candidate, for a chance to ask about your concerns, hear his goals, and dine on wine, cheese, and other refreshments.

Non-partisan and Journalists

Vote411.org for candidate answers to topical questionnaires, as provided to the League of Women Voters.

Helpfully, Bethesda Beat is reporting who on the range of endorsements received for County Executive/Council/School Board and Congress/General Assembly. This can be useful both for finding your favorite group, or just seeing which candidates have enough support to be serious contenders if you wish to be strategic with your vote.

March 10, 2017

My father, Harry Sanders, passed away seven years. As those that know my family are aware, he was a key advocate from the start, three decades ago, for the Maryland Purple Line, a light rail line connecting Bethesda, Silver Spring, College Park, and New Carrollton. God willing and the court system allowing, we’re six some years from opening day.

From the County Council and Executive to his legion of friends and colleagues, all the remembrances in 2010 included his devotion to improving transportation alternatives in our region as a citizen-activist that made people feel good about engaging in politics. I’ve been thinking a lot about that legacy in recent months and striking the balance of being indefatigable in pursuit of the public good, listening to a range of voices including opponents, and encouraging the next generation of activist.

Today, I’ve taken inspiration from the news that the Riverdale Park station will be a the boon it was meant to be, thanks to committed activists, elected leaders, and tireless staff work by both the private and public sector. It’s a reminder of what he was fighting for and what so many others have worked so hard to bring us to the cusp of delivering. Politics is full of loss and setbacks, we need friends and fellow activists to renew and carry on. Dad taught me that, but every week someone reminds me of it. I’m grateful for to so many. For those fellow transit advocates that knew him, I’m sure he’s proud of all the work you’ve done these past seven years. To all those seeking to connect our communities who never had the chance to meet him, you have my thanks.

Photo Credit: Purple Line NOW! Archives of the New Carrollton Locally Preferred Alternative Announcement in 2009.

November 09, 2016

Today appears to be a great loss, one with longstanding implications across many fronts. While some of the victories we’ve one will hold, it appears now that what I held to be the greatest domestic policy accomplishment of my life time, will be rolled back and tens of millions will lose their insurance. The battles we picked, the fights we won, were not enough to win a large enough coalition to sustain them.

What I find more troubling at the moment is that the American executive branch has increasingly accumulated power over years of gridlock. Part of the reason people have grown to distrust the system is the battle of Presidents and Congress that both can claim the mandate of the people but that lack a means to resolve their differences. The tearing down of norms has not been evenly distributed, Republicans pursued unyielding obstruction and undercut confidence in the system. Nonetheless, the power the Presidency has accumulated under both Republicans and Democrats must be faced as best we can. We have some handful of weeks to address that as best we can.

In the longer term, we’re going to need to convince more voters. But in the meantime, we there’s just loving our neighbors including those that don’t look like us, standing up to threats to life and liberty of all that live in our land, holding tight to those we care about, and seeking what common ground that can be found with those on the other side that does not compromise those principles.

Tomorrow morning, I intend to start the day by visiting the Lincoln Memorial. We have been through darker times as a nation, and the end of Reconstruction shows what backsliding can look like. This will be hard, we will need more that technocratic policy arguments and GDP growth but also religion and philosophies that have carried people through dark times in the past.

Hug those you hold dear. Be strong for one another. Thank you to everyone that has made the life I have enjoyed so much, that I have hoped to share more broadly, possible. Solidarity is the path forward I choose, I have much to contemplate in terms of how best to pursue it. But in the meantime, I’ll hold those I care about close and strive to do my part to protect the vulnerable in our country.

April 09, 2016

We have last saw unusual puppetry at UMD's Clarice Smith Performing Art center before in 2013. That year we saw the Table in which a Bunraku-style Moses puppet performed an extended one man (and three puppeteer) extended monologue that was frequently hilarious. The Salt of the Earth is a rather different story of a puppet on a challenging journey to a safe haven in the land of Israel. In this case, the puppet is on the road to the Ein Harod kibbutz, seeking to escape Tel Aviv after a military coup.

The official summary is admirably succinct and descriptive:

A thousand pounds of salt become a punishing Middle Eastern desert; plastic tanks barrel down paper streets; and a faceless, nameless puppet emerges a rebel hero in this work by artist Zvi Sahar. Puppetry and hand-painted miniature sets combine with live filmmaking and projected video feeds, as a Lilliputian universe is created and destroyed before our eyes.

In this, the play fully delivers. The puppetry is skilled, as is the cinematography which is conducted live, sometimes featuring the puppet, sometimes giving the protagonist's perspective of sets featuring salt, paper cut outs, and miniatures. The audience's ability to watch both the performance and filming and the screen up above was fascinating and mixed the virtues of theater and live film. The stylized buildings had sufficient fidelity that Kate was able to recognize an admittedly prominent fountain amidst White City buildings that she'd only previously seen in my photos.

The entire troupe performed impressively with the director and lead Zvi Sahar and the actor portraying Mahmoud having the most material to work with. Unfortunately for me, the plotting was not as strong in the second half. The noir troupes of the story, admittedly with an Israeli twist, sometimes undercut the benefits of genuinely interesting writing. For example, the female characters were often tasked with inscrutability and implausible sex (tastefully handled, I should note). I think this traces back to the source material which is well adapted, although a portrayal shift late in the play left both Kate and I briefly confused and we weren't sure that confusion was intentional.

We are quite happy with our choice to see it and some moments of the play and performances will stick with us. Even if the story had a second act problem starting with a hostage taking, it still left us with things to think about. If Puppet Cinema is again in our area, I'd certainly be curious to see what they do next.

February 18, 2016

So I'm slowly getting more rigorous about house searching. Two of our biggest criteria are transit accessibility and minimizing my wife's automotive commute time. BRT should help on the latter, but that's at least a decade away. However, in my experiments on both Redfin and [Zillow], I haven't found any way to add that sort of filter. I'd ideally like a partnership with some mapping/GIS site that made traffic estimates, but even just a road distance check would help.

This isn't just a thing that would help people obsessed with urbanism or transit. As Alex Tabarrok notes, "behavioral economics tells us that we quickly get used to big houses but we never get used to commuting. So when you have a choice, go for the smaller house closer to work" (h/t Kevin Drum).

In any event, I'm going to try to start narrowing things by zip codes and finding some nice detailed maps that I can mark up. Alternately, I may see if UMD will allow me access to a GIS lab with all of the bells and whistles subscription so I can do this myself. I do have a copy of GIS that will let me do road length analysis and I can add walk distance from existing and future rail stations. Anyone have any tricks or tips to recommend?

Clark Murdoch and his team are valued colleagues (though Sam has gone on to greener pastures). While I disagree with Clark on a good number of issues, I think his approach of using workshops and competing teams gets to the core of what think tanks do best, acting as a home for informed arguments. My expertise does not lie in this area, but my inclinations align with Barry Blechman and Russell Rumbaugh of the Stimson Center. The left can accurately complain that they're generally excluded from such debates in the national security sphere, but frankly I'm often relieved to find an argument at all rather than the low-end Kabuki that the Farley article describes. I'll always be grateful to Clark for stirring the pot from the audience at one of our events some years ago, providing some relief from a panel that was unexpectedly aligned rather than debating.

Robert Farley of the Patterson school makes the controversial case that most of the hawkish and regional players don't care about Iran's nuclear program as much as they claim. I'm not sure I agree with the hard case of this argument, but the soft version seems quite robust to me. Those forces opposing the nuclear deal have revealed that, absent revolutionary changes to the Iranian government, they care more about maintaining an adversarial relationship than they do about minimizing the likelihood of an Iranian breakout. This is a multilateral deal, backed by Europe, Russia, and China. The alternatives opponents suggest would cause the multilateral coalition to fall apart and even military strikes would only delay Iran some small number of years. I think Farley goes too far to say various factions do not care about nuclear weapons; they just are lower on the priority list than advertised.

I was moved by this piece by Jeffrey Lewis of the Center for Nonproliferation Studies on his visit to Hiroshima.

Over time, we’ve come to see nuclear weapons as Hersey saw them, as the ultimate expression of material and spiritual evil of total war. The bomb has come to represent the ability of our civilization to destroy itself and our nagging fear that our political and social institutions are inadequate to save us from the abyss.

This norm, really this fear, helps explain why nuclear weapons have not been used again in anger in the intervening 70 years. One might point to deterrence, but nor have we used the bomb against states with no nuclear weapons. Even Eisenhower hesitated in response to suggestions nuclear weapons night help relieve French forces trapped by the Viet Minh at Dien Bien Phu.

I think the President and those directly involved deserve tremendous credit for the Iran deal. Even though the then-Senator Obama's intention to pursue such a deal was the deciding factor for me back during the 2008 primary, at best I'd figured it was a 50-50 thing. But I'll end with Lewis's closing words:

A visit to Hiroshima would be a chance for the president to get it right and to reflect on his legacy. Maybe he would be satisfied that he has done enough — he has done more than many — but Hiroshima is powerful place. Amid the meetings and motorcades, I think the reality of the place may sneak under the cordons and around the bodyguards. It might slip past that famously cool façade and tickle him under the collar. I think the place would ruffle him a bit, more than he likes to admit. And I think like anyone else who visits, he’ll wish he had done more.